Thanksgiving

Friends in Boston

The cast:



Oni



Dan



Shomo



Anke



Tuncay



a turkey...



... and Frans's academic great-grandfather.

Featuring:





Chocolate



Drowning orange men



Beer...

...and ridiculous amounts of amazing food.

Turkey

It has been a month and a half since we returned from Mexico, but we still have more photos and sounds in store for you. Oh, you lucky readers!



The next stop on our travels was a little village near Xpujil. We stayed at a very friendly cabana, and spent the evening enjoying our rural surroundings.



There were turkeys everywhere and they were horny like hell. There were competitions for who had the most disgustingly blue colored neck flabs, paired with lots of loud gobbling. Sadly we also saw several incidences of turkey rape.

All in all, a very pleasant evening (although perhaps not for the female turkeys).

Thanksgiving part 2

After the thanksgiving lunch at our secretary's house, we joined a colleague for Thanksgiving dinner.

Apart from more Turkey and homemade Romanian wine, we were treated to five children holding fashion shows, performing circus acts, and god-knows-what-else.

Giving Thanks

Yesterday, we gave thanks for the fact that we don't have to live in Germany anymore (hopefully, no Germans read this blog :)

We were invited by our department's secretary, who celebrates Thanksgiving with three of her grand sons, and her three cats.







Frans spent most of his time sprawled on the floor to take cat pics, but also managed to get up at some point to take a few photos of our secretary's snowman collection.

She has about 400 of them, but apparently this one is her favorite.

Richmond Foodz

Richmond is supposed to have good foodz. We did not find it yet.



Still we enjoyed this restaurant's home cooking.

Karnıyarık

 

Maybe not F's favorite food, but delicious all the same...

My Current Favorite Foodz

My current absolute favorite food is this spiced rabbit casserole from our Turkish cookbook by Ghillie Bhasan. Another discovery lately is bulghur wheat.



So combining the two most certainly makes me smile. I fried a carrot (cut julienne) for 10 minutes --- another thing that can make anyone smile. I think there should be a dessert just based on this --- it's delicious!

Anyway, we did not come up with it ourselves, it's actually based on a bulghur recipe by the Ghilster.



Yum-o.

Turkish Stewed Fish

To make the transition between continents as easy as possible for A, I made some fish with Turkish spices: cinnamon, raisins in tomato sauce.

More Yummy Bunny

Pasta and Eggplant

On two separate days, that is. Yesterday the evergreen pasta with fennel and arugula, thanks to Ellen for the recipe, and the day before...



... karnıyarık, the taste of which I really love, but the looks of which gives me a split belly --- it is so hard to make a decent picture of this eggplant.

Tahinli Piliç

Another chicken, another tahinli piliç.

Moussaka

I don't mean to brag... or what the hell, I'll brag: best moussaka ever!

Karnıyarık

A rather awful picture of this great Turkish dish.

Patates Bastısı

Kiremitte Kebab

After finding "Bockshornklee" in town, I made this week's Turkish dish: kiremitte kebab. Don't worry, no dishes were harmed in the making.

Another Week, Another Turkish Dish

We really rediscovered Classic Turkish Cooking by Ghillie Başan! The recipes take some time to prepare, but are so worth it!

Karnıyarık and Zeytinyağlı Pırasa

The photo really does not do the karnıyarık justice: the flavors of this deep fried eggplant, stuffed with minced lamb, pine nuts and herbs and spices was incredibly good! An absolute instant favorite!



We served the eggplant with zeytinyağlı pırasa: leeks cooked olive oil and lemon juice, with lots of garlic of course. Wow!

Almost as good as breakfast at Tuncay's sister's

On our last day in Amsterdam, we took our rental bikes for a final spin (not that easy, considering that the Amsterdam marathon was blocking our every move) and went for lunch at Köşebaşı, recommended by Ellen.









Everything was awesome, except that we're not quite sure why you'd have to pay 5.75 extra for take out.